Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be sharing with you the weekly
meal prep that I'm doing for my family. All the ideas that I'm going to show you are very
simple and easy to do, all of it took me two hours. My husband took the kids to the park
so that I could do this, and it'll just save me so much time in the week. I know it's very
difficult to find time at the moment while everyone's at home, but I find whenever I
do get a chance to meal prep, it really does help me out, so I hope you really like these
ideas. I have a few different dinners to show you, some snacks, a dessert, and even a breakfast
as well, so I hope you really enjoy it. If you're new to my channel, please consider
subscribing by hitting the red button below, and if you like this kind of foodie content,
give it a big like, and without further ado, let's get into my recipes.
So first off today, I'm going to be making some ice lollies or popsicles for the kids.
I recently got these silicone molds on Amazon, and I really like them because they're lying
flat, they fit really well in our tiny freezer, and I've made it super simple for myself,
I have bought pre-made smoothies that I'm just going to put into the molds. Of course,
you could blend up your own fruit and juice, and I've actually made videos on that in the
past, so I'll link those down below, but today I'm just going to pour those in, stick them
into the freezer, and then the kids can have them for dessert tonight.
Next up, I'm going to make a slow cooker dump bag, and this time it is a Spanish chicken
recipe, so this has chicken, olives, chorizo, pepper, onion and tomato puree in it. So first
off, I'm going to finely chop an onion, and I recently got this new gadget, it's a VonShef
chopper. I got it because my friend Kerry swears by it, and it does chop up onions and
carrots and garlic so very quickly, as you can see, I just pressed a button and now I
have finely-chopped onions like this. Next up, I'm going to put my chicken into
the Tupperware where I'm going to keep everything. The recipe that I'm following, which I will
link below, actually called for eight chicken thighs, but we got chicken breasts in, so
I thought I would use that instead, so I've put that into the Tupperware, and then I'm
going to chop up three peppers. It can be literally any color, whatever you have, so
I'm using orange, yellow and red, and I'm just chopping them into bite-sized pieces
for us, and then I'm going to carry on and do that for all of the other ones.
But if you don't know what a slow cooker dump bag is, it is basically just putting all of
the ingredients that you're going to throw into your slow cooker into a bag, or in my
case, into this glass Tupperware, and it's just so handy to have either in the freezer
or in the fridge, and then on a morning when you wake up and you need to stick dinner into
the slow cooker, all you do is just chuck everything into the slow cooker at once, and
it makes it so quick and easy, and then you have a delicious dinner.
And now I'm chopping up and adding in a whole chorizo, and this adds so much flavor to the
dish, then I'm also going to add in the finely-chopped onion that I showed you earlier, along with
some olives. I'm going to put that whole thing of green olives in, these are the Sainsbury's
basic ones, we buy them every week and have them in salads and dishes like this, and they're
just so yummy. And then finally, I'm going to add in a tablespoon of tomato puree, and
it smells so good, but that's all I'm going to add to the Tupperware, but I am going to
write myself a little note on a label to remind myself that when I do put this into the slow
cooker, I need to add 300 ml of white wine and 300 ml of vegetable stock, or you can
use chicken stock, whatever you have, and it needs to go in for six hours on low.
Next up, I'm going to make Matt's favorite vegetarian shepherd's pie. This recipe is
so yummy, we've made it about five times now, and I think out of all the meat-free dinners
that we do, this is the best one for not knowing that it doesn't have meat in it, it tastes
exactly like a normal shepherd's pie. So first off, I'm taking about 700 grams of potatoes,
peeling them, chopping them, and then I'm going to boil them for 20 minutes until they're
soft, and then I can mash them, and that will be the top of the pie.
Yeah, so we've been eating meat-free three to four nights per week as a family, and it's
actually been easier than I thought it was going to be. We started doing it for the health
benefits after watching a documentary called What the Health, but also eating less meat
has a positive impact on the environment as well, and there's so many yummy recipes out
there, but obviously you could also make a recipe like this with beef mince or lamb mince
as well. But now I've just put an onion and two carrots into my mini chopper, and I'm
going to whizz that up until it is finely-chopped, and then put that into my frying pan with
a bit of olive oil, and then let that soften for about four minutes before adding in the
Quorn mince and the stock and the tomato puree. So while that's softening, I'm going to make
up my vegetable stock, I'm just using one from Knorr, and I'm going to need about 400
ml of that, then I'm also going to add in an entire pack of Quorn mince. I have worked
with Quorn in the past, but this isn't part of that partnership, but it's super simple
to use, and the good thing about it is it just has to simmer for about 12 minutes and
then it is completely cooked. Then once that's been mixed up, I'm going to add in a tablespoon
of Worcestershire sauce, then also a tablespoon of soy sauce, a big tablespoon of tomato puree,
and then I'll add the stock in and let that simmer for about 12 minutes as I said, or
until it's thickened. Oh, and I also forgot to mention that you
add in a tablespoon of flour. The recipe I'm following actually called for cornflour, but
we used all our cornflour to make slime, so all I had was normal flour, and it actually
worked just as well, so I've added that in and just giving it a mix around, and by now
the potatoes are ready, so I'm going to strain them and then mash them. All I do to mash
them is use a potato masher, and I'm going to add in some butter and the tiniest bit
of milk. Matt actually doesn't add any milk when he makes mashed potato, he said "You
don't need it," but I'm adding in a tiny bit to make it easier for myself.
And that's pretty much it, all that's left to do is put the two together, so I'm going
to put the Quorn mixture into the bottom of my rectangular pie tray thingy, and then cover
that with the mashed potato, and what I tend to do is flatten down the mashed potato and
then rough it up with a fork, because I find that makes the topping really crispy, and
you can also add cheese if you want to, but I'm going to lay off the cheese today. And
I think I'm actually going to freeze this dinner so that I can just have it, and then
pull it out as and when I need it, but this is a great one for me to make because this
can sometimes feed our family for two nights. If I serve it with loads of vegetables and
roast potatoes as well, and the boys like gravy and stuff, it will actually feed us
for longer than one night, which is always good.
And now I really wanted to show you an orange and oatmeal muffin recipe. I made this and
shared it on my IGTV as part of a Tropicana ad that I did, but I keep making this recipe
because it's so simple and I really like that it has oatmeal in it. So first off, you want
to combine a cup of oatmeal, which are like the Quick Oats that you could microwave, and
then you also want to add in a cup of orange juice, and leave that to one side to let the
oats soften. Then in a bowl you just mix up your dry ingredients, which is a cup of wholemeal
flour, half a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a teaspoon of bicarbonate
of soda. Then you want to add in two egg whites, and
then you also add in the orange and oatmeal mix, and then you just mix that all up, and
that is literally how easy it is. What I also like about this recipe is I don't feel too
guilty when I eat them, because it's completely fat-free as you can see, and if you didn't
want to use the eggs, you can also add in applesauce as a substitute, so it could be
vegan as well if you wanted it to be. So I'm just going to give that a really good
mixture, and then I'm using a silicone muffin tray. Because they are fat-free, they can
be quite sticky to muffin paper, so I find that this works best. So I've just greased
it with my Frylight spray, and then I always tend to use an ice cream scoop when I'm doing
muffins, because it makes it so quick and easy. This mixture should actually make 12
muffins, but I think I've gone overboard on a couple of them, so it didn't quite make
it to 12, but once you've put it into the tray, then you just stick it into the oven
for 15 minutes, and that is it. These are really yummy with a hint of orange, and sometimes
I even use these for dessert. I'll put Nutella on the top so that they then look like a cupcake,
and then the boys will have them for pudding if I literally have nothing else in, and they
love it. So while the muffins are in the oven, I'm
going to steam two chicken breasts because I'm going to show you a really cool recipe
on how to make muffin tray chicken pies for your kids, and while they're steaming, because
that does take about 20 minutes, I'm also going to boil up some eggs so that we have
some hard-boiled eggs, which can be for a snack, to go in a salad, or even to make egg
salad sandwiches, so those are quite handy to have in the fridge.
While everything's going on, I'm also going to wash some fruit. I'm going to wash a punnet
of strawberries, and grapes as well. The way that I wash them, I have showed before, but
I just put them into water for a good five minutes. Some people like to add bicarbonate
of soda or vinegar, but I'm actually just using water to soak them. And while they're
soaking, I'm also going to chop up some veg. I find it so handy to have chopped up veg
in the fridge for kids' snacks, they love to have this with hummus, or even if I'm doing
dinner for them, my kids really love raw veggies, so I could just stick like five of these on
the side of their dinner as well, so I'm chopping up some carrots, and then I'm also going to
chop up some peppers. One thing I will say is if your kids do like
veggies like this, I should have probably chopped up more, because we got through this
in about two days, because I would have a couple, the kids had some as well, so I probably
will chop a bit more in the future, but so handy to have that ready to go. It's like
when your kids are like, "I want a snack" and you're like, "Quick," but it's nice to
have healthy options on hand. So the eggs actually just take 10 minutes,
so I've just strained them, and now I've put them into cold water, and by the time that
that's done, the muffins are also done, so I'm going to put them onto my little cake
stand. I think I've shown this before, Matt got it for me, and I love it because it's
flat and it's marble. He got it on Amazon, and it's got this really cool cover on it,
so it just sits on the side, and literally they don't last long, that was Caleb just
came along and took one straight away. Once the eggs have cooled down, I'm just going
to store them in one of our little glass Tupperwares, we got a bunch of these for meal prepping,
and they're really handy. I'm also going to put the fruit in there once they're all clean.
I'm going to put the strawberries in one, and then I ummed and ahed whether to take
all the grapes off of the vine, or even chop them up, because I still chop the grapes for
the boys, but then I decided against it, I thought they'd probably stay fresher as they
are, but that actually helps me out that they're even clean.
After 20 minutes, the chicken is all done, I've cut it up just to check, and then I'm
going to cut them into cubes, which is going to be the inside of the little chicken pot
pies for the boys. So I saw this recipe online, and I thought it would be perfect for Caleb,
because he really likes pastry and he really likes meat as well, he loves things like sausage
rolls, so I thought we could try this and maybe he would eat a couple of them for dinner,
so I'm just cubing up the chicken, and then I'm going to make the inside of the pie.
I've made this so simple. There were so many different ways that you can do this online
that involved mushrooms and onions, but I was like, "You know what? Keep it really simple,"
so I've just got the chicken, some frozen peas, which I've literally just chucked in
as many as I think the boys will eat, and then for the sauce I'm just adding in a can
of cream of chicken soup. This is like a concentrated soup, like the Campbell's ones, and I actually
only added in three quarters of the can because I know my boys wouldn't want it to be really
saucy, but I think most people would probably want the whole can in there. But this was
a really delicious filling, even Matt ate them and was like, "This is such a yummy pie."
So I'm going to again grease my silicone muffin tray, just with my spray oil, and then I'm
just going to roll out some shortcrust pastry, and then I'm going to use a glass to cut circles,
put them into the muffin tray, fill them up, and then also cut smaller circles for the
top bit. Then I did some little cuts in the top so
that steam can escape, and I'm also doing an egg wash on top, just because it makes
pastry look so much nicer and golden and shiny. Obviously you don't have to do this, but anything
you can do to make your kids' food more enticing is a good thing, then you just cook it for
20 to 30 minutes or until it looks like nice and golden brown like this, and I will say
that the boys really did enjoy these, especially Fraser, he ate two or three of these. I ended
up serving them with a potato waffle and some raw veggies, so bit random, but they did really
like them, so I will be trying them again. Then last thing that I'm going to do for this
meal prep is I'm going to make a super simple Greek salad so that Matt and I can have it
for lunches for two to three days. So all I'm going to add in is some rinsed chickpeas,
then I'm also going to chop up a red onion and some cucumber and some little cherry tomatoes.
I'm also going to add in some more olives and some Greek feta, then I'm actually going
to put some balsamic vinegar on this, but you could easily make a lemon and oil and
oregano dressing if you wanted to. And this keeps quite well in the fridge, because there's
no lettuce leafs in it, so we can have this for lunch, or if we... Because it's the summer,
if we're having a chicken-type dinner, we could have this on the side as a salad, and
it's really yummy. So that's it for this video, I really hope
you enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments below which recipe was your favorite, and
I'll see you in my next one, bye guys.
Thanks for watching today.